Monthly Archives: June 2013

“The thing I hate hearing most when people talk about the crisis is that the bailouts “saved the system” or ended up “making money.” Participating in bailout measures was the most distasteful thing I have ever had to do, and…

There have been two movies recently about terrorist attacks on the Whitehouse; Olympus has Fallen and White House Down. The second one even has a black president played by Jamie Fox. I can’t decide if it is wishful thinking or…

Kevin Williamson writes in The National Review, iPencil, Nobody knows how to make a pencil, or a health-care system Excerpts: The problem of politics is the problem of knowledge. The superiority of market processes to political processes is not in origin moral but technical. The…

Kevin Williamson writes in The National Review, iPencil, Nobody knows how to make a pencil, or a health-care system Excerpts: Politics creates the immortal corporation. Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service are two institutions that would have failed long ago if not…

My interest in this debate is more about its psychology than its substance. One of my guiding observations in finance and other areas is that “when markets go to extremes it pays to be a contrarian”. Much of the language…

Holman Jenkins writes in The Wall Street Journal, The Climate Speech Obama Didn’t Give, 6/28/2013 Excerpts: If we are serious about climate change, we must seriously factor in the accelerating rate of technological change already in our society. I’m personally…

“A couple of years ago, National Journal analyzed the number of family members of sitting senators who were working as lobbyists. Fully thirty-three senators had family members who were registered as lobbyists or who worked for lobbying firms. That’s one-third…

“Imperfection, ambiguity, opacity, disorder, and the opportunity to err, to sin, to do the wrong thing: all of these are constitutive of human freedom, and any concentrated attempt to root them out will root out that freedom as well. If…

Daniel Greenfield writes in his blog, Sultan Knish, Savages of Socialism, Excerpts: In Venezuela, savvy shoppers are hunting down scarce supplies of toilet paper with a smartphone app. The smartphones, compact packages of electronics, are several generations more advanced than…

“Likewise, those in corporations or in policy making (like Fragilista Greenspan) who are endowed with a sophisticated data-gathering department and are therefore getting a lot of “timely” statistics are capable of overreacting and mistaking noise for information—Greenspan kept an eye…

The End of Control from Sultan Knish, Daniel Greenfield Pathological Altruism from Carpe Diem, Mark Perry. A Nation of Kids on Speed in the WSJ by Pieter Cohen and Nicholas Rasmussen. Excerpt: Stimulants can certainly benefit some young children with truly…

Thomas Hemphill and Mark Perry write The Myth of ‘Cowboy Capitalism’ in The American, 3/3/13. Excerpts: The Code of Federal Regulations (established in 1938) is where all the administrative rules of U.S. federal agencies are compiled; American businesses, employees, and…

“Some argue that redistribution to the poor is social insurance that protects all of us from misfortune. What’s wrong with social insurance where the unfortunate receive payouts? Nothing. The problem, of course, is creating insurance with payouts suitable for a…

Daniel Greenfield writes in his blog Sultan Knish, The Art of Building Things, 6/10/13. Excerpts: Creativity is an individual act. The act of building something, whether with hammers, blueprints, words, boards or plans is individualistic. Collectives can build, but not…

Robert Zubrin writes Green Anti-Humanism in The National Review 2/21/13 Excerpts: The use of fictitious necessity to rationalize human oppression is not new. Whether the justification is a putative lack of food (e.g., Malthus, 1817, “A great part of the [Irish] population…

Daniel Greenfield writes in his excellent blog The Sultan Knish, Government is the New Race, 6/7/13. Excerpts: While you might think that it would be impossible to run an entire cable news network around accusing people of racism, MSNBC has…